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A Year of Doing Good

Judith O'Reilly, author of the hugely popular blog and book Wife in the North embarks on a year long social experiment in the witty A Year of Doing Good.

Fed up of New Year's resolutions involving diets and exercise abandoned on January 2nd, Judith is attempting to be good. For one whole year.

She embarked on a mission to do one good deed every day. Some called it a social experiment. At times she called it madness.

Juggling family, friends and a variety of neighbours in the small Northumberland village she calls home, she recounts the ups, downs, moments of doubt and sheer bloody hard work of doing good.

From the small - babysitting a friend's child, clearing up her neighbour's dead mice and feeding her friendship cake Herman the German, to the slightly larger - trying to raise £10,000 for charity with her Jam Jar Army and teaching a severely handicapped child to write - she describes what she learns along the way: that no good deed is too small and that being good makes you happy. Well, most of the time.